Swale
Swale district contains some of the North Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), as well as much of north Kent’s now-scarce coastal countryside. While the borough is crossed by the M2/A2 and features the towns of Sittingbourne and Faversham, much of it is profoundly rural, especially on the Isle of Sheppey and to the south of Faversham.
The eastern part of the district is in the Thames Gateway growth area, and is therefore under particularly heavy pressure to accommodate large volumes of new housing. At least 8,300 additional homes are planned in Swale to 2026, though under the current Swale local plan it should be possible to accommodate them all on brownfield sites.
However, the new housing horizon has a dark cloud throwing its shadow over Swale’s green fields. The Thames Gateway project appears to be veering towards greenfield building, and a particular danger is posed by Sittingbourne Science Park housing and road plan.
Thames Estuary Airport 'Boris Island'
London Mayor, Boris Johnson, is determined that a new London airport should be built in the Thames Estuary between Sheppey and Essex. This would replace Heathrow, and its controversial proposed third runway. Previous proposals for airports in this area (Cliffe and Maplin Sands) have failed, largely due to the sensitivity of the European-designated habitats and the high risk of bird-strike. KCC argue that there is no need for it when there is capacity and development potential at Manston Airport, Thanet.
Kent Science Park
The owner of the science park, LaSalle Investment Management, hopes to expand it to five times its current size to the south of the town, and to construct a mass of lucrative housing at the same time. The current plan would see 124 acres of industrial and commercial buildings, 230 acres of housing in the Highstead Valley and 48 acres given over to an A2/M2 link road. All of this development would be greenfield.
CPRE Kent very strongly opposes this scheme, for which there is no convincing justification whatsoever. The housing is not required in the local plan, the road would achieve little more than taking people away to jobs and services to the west, and no valid argument has been put forward that the science park has the potential for significant expansion. Only 15% of the existing park’s employees have science-based jobs, and a quarter of park’s 800 jobs are in a call centre.
We fully support local campaigning body the Five Parishes Opposition Group, whose spokesperson Monique Bonney said: “There are many eminently suitable sites for scientific employment in town and to the north of Sittingbourne, related to the existing and proposed business estates which have excellent road links already, without the need to carve new routes through the countryside. We have every reason to fear that if we drop our guard and see our green fields disappear beneath Tarmac and concrete, we will only get a rash of low-grade commercial development in return.”
Her comments have been echoed by CPRE Kent director Dr Hilary Newport. “Quality countryside is in desperately short supply already in north Kent, and relentless pressure threatens to build it out of existence. When a proposal offers nothing of real benefit but threatens so much damage to our natural environment, it must be refused. For the landowner this promises to be hugely profitable,” she said. “For everyone else, and especially for rural Kent, it would be a disaster.”
Update, 29-02-08:
The inspectors’ report on the Swale local plan was received in December 2007, and the borough council adopted the plan on 20 February. The inspector recommended that future developments at the Kent Science Park should be kept within the boundary fence. The bad news is that the local plan, on the recommendation of the inspector, includes new greenfield housing at Bapchild.
The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) has produced its delivery plan for the Thames Gateway. We are heartened by the fact that it makes no mention of the Kent Science Park, of the idea of a new link road from the M2 to the A2 or of the development which would be necessary to pay for it. But we are not convinced that the battle is over! Local politicians are still keen on the idea (at least those from Faversham are!)
Cleve Hill substation, Graveney
While CPRE Kent fully supports the 270-turbine London Array offshore wind farm planned for the Thames estuary, we were deeply disappointed that the developers chose a greenfield site for the project’s onshore electricity substation.
It was always easy to see why London Array chose Graveney for its substation. It is relatively near the turbines (which will be 12 miles from the Kent coast), there is already a 400kV overhead line running through the area, and the impact of the new substation can to some extent be mitigated by building into the side of Cleve Hill. However, CPRE Kent believes that the substation represents an unacceptable industrialisation of the north Kent countryside. We argued that the developer had not adequately studied alternative sites, and that to build on green fields as part of a renewable energy project was degrading the landscape in the name of its salvation.
Swale Borough Council also opposed the application, but the decision was overturned by the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) following an appeal. We can only hope that the strength of the fight against this proposal has ensured that there is, in the future, closer examination of potential landscape damage from renewable-energy infrastructure.
Brogdale National Fruit Collection
CPRE Kent was delighted to hear at the end of 2007 that the National Fruit Collection – the largest of its kind in the world – would remain at Brogdale, near Faversham. On 19 December Defra, which owns the collection, awarded a contract for its management from 2008 to the University of Reading.
The 150-acre collection, which features more than 2,300 varieties of apple, 550 of pear, 350 of plum and 220 of cherry, had been threatened with relocation to East Malling. Local opinion, backed by CPRE Kent, was overwhelmingly in favour of Defra’s announcement that it would stay where it is, a decision described by campaigner Joan Morgan as “a triumph of common sense”.
See her comments on the Fruit Forum blog for more detail.